People who love the game of football set up rules and limits. I love hunting and I am more than fine with setting limits. So don’t argue whether there are any limits. Argue where they should be set.
I said we passed reasonable regulations a long time ago...asking for more and more tips the balance of power toward the state and away from the individual. Reasonable tag limits to benefit the herds, makes sense. Reasonable road closures to improve safety zones for the herds makes sense.
Getting nitpicky about how a guy kills an animal makes no sense. It is just micromanaging and is ultimately arbitrary. We have been arbitrary in breaking it into seasons so the various groups can have their experience. But going beyond it and micromanaging it down to such a cellular level is just bad precedent.
We have to have regulations and we have to have government and this isn't radical talk...this is what the founding fathers discussed setting up the nation...how do you keep it in check...the only consistent way is through a proper personal empowerment. The individual can not be all powerful, nor can they be wholly dependent on the government. True liberty lies in a check of self empowerment and government limited by a moral people.
Asking for government to do more and more shifts the balance of our powers further and further from a healthy self empowerment. Sure it may not backfire today or tomorrow...but the national trend is fewer and fewer allies for hunters. So what happens in 10 or 15yrs with all our arbitrary micromanaging?
One thing that doesn't happen is an improvement of hunting opportunity. The herds are not going to recover until the drought cycle ends or public land grazing takes a backseat to wildlife. The weather patterns improving being the more likely outcome...but how likely? Did we break the cycle last winter...are we on a new trend line...we won't know until another 5yrs or more. But whether a guy uses a trail camera or not isn't going to make more does or cows pregnant. Whether or not a guy can shoot over 300yrds with a muzzleloader isn't going to improve the fawn and calf mortality rates.
Like you said....focus on where we can make a difference. Focus on how we educate people about inappropriate suburban development. It makes our souls sick to see houses being developed the way they are. It makes it hard for wildlife to survive. Ultimately almost every species is suffering in varying degrees because of our manifest destiny approach to land development.
Focus people on why highways and freeways and byways need to have over and underpasses. This isn't just about protecting wildlife, it is also about protecting human life. We don't have to have that collision rate if we would just accept it needs to be a function of roads. Dropping that death rate will save thousands of deer lives and give more opportunities to hunters and more importantly save human lives and insurance costs.
As always do something about predators and if you have the resources do what you can to improve habitat. Make changes where changes will bring positive change. Making changes where no significant improvements can come is just foolishness.
Also equating hunting to a game is the end of hunting. If it is just recreation there isn't enough justification to save it. The middle of the road doesn't like it well enough to tolerate some boys trying to prove something. If it's about meat then we earn the respect of the middle of the road and we'll really most of the hunting population is in it for meat. Killing for a head may get a selection of the population jacked...and that portion may have the highest incomes and as given individuals may pay more than a regular joe like me...but they also repulse more than they win. Conservation and meat hunting are what justifies hunting to the masses. Definitely head hunters give to the conservation aspect, but the bad taste in the majority of people's mouths when they don't use the meat is what they try to stereotype all hunters as in order to get rid of hunting.
Hunting is not a sport. It is killing. While I am a meat hunter...I am also a conservationist. So I believe in letting them grow. Only makes sense...you get more meat and it cooks about as great as a young deer too, just has bigger antlers. And hunting in today's corporate America is being more essential as we have lower and lower confidence in what mass processes are doing to our foods. Focus on what matters.
Habitat. Tags. Public knowledge of wildlife. Going beyond that just gets lost in the weeds of subjectivity and removes individual empowerment from our hands. We really, really don't want to find ourselves hand tied with years and years of arbitrary quibbling and squabbling.
